"B.C. Policy Perspectives" is the web log of Mark Crawford. THE PURPOSE OF THIS BLOG IS NOT PARTISAN OR IDEOLOGICAL. INSTEAD, I TRY TO IDENTIFY POSITIONS AND PERSPECTIVES THAT ARE NEGLECTED, DROWNED OUT OR UNDERREPRESENTED ELSEWHERE. Some politicians and journalists have found it helpful and interesting, and I hope that you do, too!
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Sunday, September 20, 2015

It’s the home stretch of the federal election campaign
and two leaders’ debates and endless commercials may have done more to blur lines
between the parties and leaders than to clarify them. The Liberals and NDP may
have even switched places, with Justin Trudeau being anxious to corral the
anti-Conservative vote with ambitious talk of redistributive tax adjustment and
deficit spending on infrastructure, and Mr. Mulcair striving to reassure
centrist voters and buttressing the NDP’s “balanced budget” record.If it’s any help , here are three or four observations about what I think should happen both during and after the
election.

First, the prime minister’s attempt to portray
himself as a practical, sensible fellow who is only interested in being a good
manager is highly misleading.He is far
more ideological than that, and if re-elected his American-style
neoconservatism will have consequences for democracy and health care and the
environment that are potentially far-reaching. It is difficult to discern a large
economic dividend from the government’s attempts to privilege the corporate
sector, and the oil & gas sector in particular. But we needthat dividend if we are to be persuaded that
this government’s game is worth its candle.

Second, the NDP’s “balanced budget” mantra is
genuine.Mr. Mulcair has latched onto
the fact that, according to the historical record, NDP governments balanced
budgets more often than either Liberal or Conservative governments did on
average between 1980 and 2010 (although some spectacular exceptions do tend to
stick in voters’ minds). This is a basis for fiscal respectability and marks a
return to the fiscal tradition of Tommy Douglas. Of course, several of the
Conservatives’ tax loopholes will need to be closed in order to afford this,
and the corporate tax rate will need to be raised to something closer to the
OECD average. But when you balance the negative impacts of raising corporate
taxes to the still-competitive rate of 17% against the positive benefits of
lower small business rates, a lower proportion of tax burden being borne by
ordinary Canadians, and the economic benefits of more infrastructure and a
million child care spaces—that should be OK.

Third, I like what Justin Trudeau has said about the
importance of infrastructure spending when the need is great, the debt-to GDP
ratio is low, and interest rates continue to be rock-bottom.Although Conservative infrastructure
spendingis large in absolute terms and has
risen sharply (to over 4 per cent of GDP), under the circumstances we should
have had more,especially on transit and transportation of various kinds,
and less on advertising and political
spending in Tory ridings.

With any luck, the next Parliament will have a fresh
approach to democratic reform, the environment, science, health, refugees and
infrastructure, within a framework that is still fiscally responsible.

Mark
Crawford is a former public servant and a professor of political science at
Athabasca University.

Tuesday, September 01, 2015

Of course he rejects the Statistics Canada report concerning the definition of a recession. Just like he and other conservatives reject the ICPP reports on climate change, United Nations and Amnesty International reports on Palestine, unanimous verdicts of the Supreme Court of Canada concerning criminal justice and the rule of law, the concerns of Sheila Fraser and Marc Mayrand about the Fair Elections Act, the Parliamentary Budget Officer on C-35s, the leading legal experts on Bil C-51 and the leading trade experts on FIPPA, and scientists on just about anything...the scary thing about this government and the constellation of interests and ideas that it represents is that they do not respect any authority other than their own.

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On Knowing (1)

"The most perfect philosophy of the natural kind only staves off our ignorance a little longer: as perhaps the most perfect philosophy of the moral or metaphysical kind serves only to discover larger portions of it." ---David Hume

On Knowing (2)

"Everyone takes the limits of his own vision for the limits of the world."--- Arthur Schopenhauer

On Knowing (3)

"There is no a priori reason for thinking that the truth, once discovered, will necessarily prove interesting."---C.I. Lewis